India should not try to provoke a nuclear-armed state: DG ISPR

Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj-Gen Asif Ghafoor on Saturday hit back at the New Delhi by saying the country should stop ‘war mongering’ and ‘not take the nuclear armed state’s overtures for peace as its weakness’.

Speaking to a private TV channel, the spokesperson of the military’s media wing said that India should act sensibly and should not try to disturb regional peace.

Maj-Gen Ghafoor further said that Pakistan is a nuclear power and New Delhi should stop trying to ‘test our patience’. He also termed the Indian army chief’s statement as ‘irresponsible’.

The statement comes moments after Indian army chief Bipin Rawat threatened Pakistan of ‘painful’ retaliation over its alleged involvement in the killing of a BSF soldier and policemen in the occupied Kashmir last week.

“We need to take stern action to avenge the barbarism that terrorists and the Pakistan Army have been carrying out,” India TV reported General Rawat as saying.

“Yes, it’s time to give it back to them in the same coin, not resorting to similar kind of barbarism. But I think the other side must also feel the same pain.”

On Friday, India called off a meeting scheduled for next week between its foreign minister with the Pakistani counterpart.

The meeting between Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was to take place in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session.

The Indian foreign ministry had said the talks were called off after the “latest brutal killings of our security personnel by Pakistan-based entities and the recent release of a series of twenty postage stamps by Pakistan glorifying a terrorist and terrorism”. It did not provide further details about the alleged killings.

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